What is Mint?
Mint is a free budgeting app that helps you better manage your family’s finances. It lets you consolidate all of your bank accounts, credit card accounts, and other financial accounts, in one convenient location and track your expenses. With Mint you’ll know exactly where you’re saving and investing your hard earned money.
It also offers helpful reminders that mean that you’ll be less likely to forget your bill payments. The dashboard is my favourite part. There, you’ll find a full view of your net worth, including bank accounts, investments and properties. This is perfect for anyone who has a lot of accounts and wants to stay organized.
With the app, you can see a visual representation of your spending and investments and see how they’re doing on a monthly or even weekly basis.
With Mint the price is right. This app is completely free for users, although that free price tag comes at a cost, which is why we have decided to look at some alternatives.
Why switch from Mint?
Mint can be a great budgeting app, but it’s not without its shortcomings and there do happen to be some great alternatives. Let’s look at some of these shortcomings now.
- Data synching issues – Mint doesn’t connect with a lot of the smaller banks and credit unions. It mainly only lets you connect with the big banks. And even when you’re connected, it can be tough to stay connected. You may have to rebuild that connection several times a year. This can cause the data you’re using in the app to be outdated.
- Bad customer service – Because it’s a free app, you’re pretty much on your own when it comes to customer service. If you have an issue, good luck getting an answer if it’s not in the apps’ FAQs.
- Too much advertising – Mint has to pay the bills, so it has a lot of ads; too many in my opinion. This can hurt the overall experience with the app.
- Lacking investment tools – Mint’s investing tools are pretty basic. They’re downright lacklustre when it comes to the competition. It can be a real chore to monitor the performance of your investments with Mint.
- No data reconciliation – Mint makes the assumption that all the data that you download is correct, when that often isn’t the case. It’s been known to mis-categorize purchases, making data reconciliation even harder.
Note: Due to changes in bank feeds in Canada, users have reported that their automatic connections are unreliable and will frequently disconnect. This isn’t an issue with any particular app but due to a security measure Canadian banks have put in place over the past few years.
Top 5 alternatives to Mint
Now that you know the drawbacks, let’s look at a few alternatives to the Mint app.
1. PocketSmith
PocketSmith is a budgeting app that helps you make smarter financial decisions and provides you with a better overall overview of your finances. There’s a free version as well as a premium/super paid version. Similar to Mint, the app has built-in notifications to help keep your spending in check.
The app also uses a calendar to keep track of your expenses, differentiating between one-time and recurring expenses. The paid versions have fewer ads and there is better customer service available.
Start your PocketSmith subscription now! Use our Money.ca link and get 50% off a monthly Premium subscription for the first two months.
2. KOHO
KOHO offers a more comprehensive suite than Mint. At its core, it’s a reloadable Mastercard® that you can use to earn cash back on everyday purchases. It also has a handy app that lets you keep track of your finances in actual time. Essentially, KOHO lets you spend, budget, save, and earn cash back while receiving other perks that come standard with the pre-paid card you choose. It has a free version, KOHO Easy, like many others on this list, but the perks kick up a notch in the paid versions.
Sign up and get a $20 instant cash bonus (once you load your account and make your no minimum first purchase within 30 days) right to your KOHO account with MONEY referral code.
3. Tangerine savings
I’ve been a satisfied Tangerine client (formerly ING Direct) for over 20 years. While the Mint app is mainly a budgeting app, the Tangerine app is so much more.
As mentioned, Mint is a bit lacking in the visual department, an area where the Tangerine app shines. I really like how the interface is clean and easy to use. When I login I’m greeted by a screen that says what I have and what I owe. It’s nice and simple.
The Tangerine app helps you track where your money is going. There’s a pie chart that categorizes your spending, so you don’t have to.
4. Wally
Wally is a lot like Mint. It allows you to sync all of your accounts and automatically tracks them in one convenient place. You’re able to track your account balances in real time. It’s also free like Mint.
Wally’s premium account, known as Wally Gold sends repeat notification which help ensure you never miss a bill payment. Advanced filtering also lets you review your budget with a fine tooth comb, in a lot more detail than you would be able to with Mint.
5. Wealthsimple
Wealthsimple isn’t a budgeting app, per se. It’s an investing app. If you were hoping to replace Mint with an app, this isn’t it. That being said, Wealthsimple does something really well – it helps you better manage your investments.
The Wealthsimple app aims to bring everything you love about the Wealthsimple desktop experience to your mobile device. Through the app you can build an investment portfolio in less than five minutes. With features like automated deposits and portfolio rebalancing, you’re can better keep track of your investing goals.
Apply here and get a $25 cash bonus when you open and fund a new Wealthsimple account with a $500 minimum initial deposit.
Summary
Getting a budgeting app is a great way to improve and track your finances. Though Mint is still considered a top choice, there are other noteworthy alternatives on the market that will help you get the results you want and the savings you need.
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